by Amie Kaufman
De Luca appears first, on the other side of the window. His mouth is moving but I can’t hear anything. The transparent wall is soundproof. I glance at Mia, who’s watching him intently, and my heart swells with admiration. Even now, even exhausted, she’s still gathering data, still desperately trying to figure out how to get these people to listen to us. I know she’s terrified of what they might do to Evie if she gets on the wrong side of them, but she’s not letting it stop her.
Suddenly her lips peel back into a snarl. “You!”
My gaze snaps across. There’s a woman outside, and she—
Mehercule.
It’s Charlotte Stapleton, the IA operative who recruited me to go to Gaia in the first place, pretending to work for Global Energy Solutions, a ruse so sophisticated that she created an entire corporate front—she hired my cousin Neal for an internship, just to impress me with her imaginary company’s resources. If I haven’t lost track of time, he was supposed to start the thing this week.
Mia knew her as Mink, and I think I prefer that name—I’ve no doubt both Mink and Charlotte are fictitious, but the former seems more fitting.
Mink knew that with my father in IA detention after his outburst to try and warn the public about the Undying, there was no way I would voluntarily lead anyone from the International Alliance through Gaia’s mysteries. I didn’t trust them to share what they found, to preserve the learning, to interpret it properly. I knew they were too desperate for the power sources they might find there. I must have heard it a thousand times—one small piece of Undying tech was enough to power the fresh water plant for the whole of Los Angeles, and send power up the grid to what’s left of the west coast. Imagine what else we could find.
She counted on the fact that I’d search for evidence to confirm my father’s theories only if I didn’t know I was being followed—if I thought I was on my own. She seeded the planet with scavengers to give me the impression that more than one company had found a way to smuggle people through the portal to Gaia, that I’d need to hurry if I wanted to get to that evidence before the scavengers did.
She sent me to meet with a nonexistent party, and then watched to see what I would do when I thought I was alone and unobserved. She was sure I’d lead her to the tech she needed. Except Mia found me first, which wasn’t part of Mink’s plan.
Only once we were well inside the temple did she send her hired guns to find me. A group led by Liz, who’s dead now—we’ve seen firsthand what Mink does with people she doesn’t need anymore.
This is the woman who realized how I felt about Mia and forced me to decode the operation of the ancient ship with Mia’s life as collateral. The woman who launched the damn thing, despite my desperate warnings.
Now, Mink walks into the room alongside De Luca, with Captain Abrantes bringing up the rear.
Brilliant. Now we’ve got the IA’s European security, ground forces, and … skullduggery represented in the same room.
And the interesting thing is that the air is singing with tension—it’s in every line of their bodies.
But though Mink has been utterly ruthless every moment I’ve known her, she’s never been stupid. She may be our last hope—even though I wouldn’t trust her for a second.
“You have to convince them that we’re telling the truth.” The words are out before I choose them.
Mink turns her gaze toward me, brows lifting slightly, but she doesn’t get a chance to respond before De Luca speaks.
“She doesn’t have to do anything, Mr. Addison.”
What is it with this guy and making sure he enforces every possible subtle nuance around rank? Insecure much?
Mia speaks. “Why are we all back here? I thought the two of us were liars, out to cause trouble and get rich.”
Good question, Mia. This is a lot of attention for two kids they’ve already dismissed.
Captain Abrantes folds his arms. “You are both more than that. There’s a massive alien ship in orbit, and until the IA has analyzed and divided the technological advancements onboard, you are a danger.”
I glance across at Mink, hoping she’ll join the conversation, but she’s still studying Mia and me more intently than she ever has.
Mia nods. “So everybody wants a piece of the shiny new thing. What else is new?”
De Luca’s brow lowers disapprovingly. “World governments are not the same as scavengers, Miss Radcliffe.” He pronounces scavengers with careful articulation, as though he doesn’t want his mouth to come into contact with the word a second longer than it must.
Mink leans against the wall at her back, folding her arms casually—though the sharpness of her gaze is anything but casual. “But she’s right. Everybody does want a piece of it.”
De Luca exhales, nostrils flaring. “Had the ship not been placed in orbit so precipitously, the IA would have been in a better position to anticipate the response of the major players in this game.”
Mink’s expression is stony.
Oho. There’s tension here indeed. All is not well between our captors.
I glance sidelong at Mia, whose expression is speculative—she hasn’t missed the friction between the various branches of the IA represented before us. I can almost hear her thoughts turning over, searching for a way to turn them against one another and to our advantage. But finally Mink’s joined the conversation, and I can’t waste the chance.
“Look,” I say. “Do you accept that Mia and I were on Gaia?”
Mink and De Luca nod. “If nothing else, the data there in Mr. Addison’s journal confirms you were on the surface,” De Luca says, tilting his head toward the motley array of belongings on the far table.
“And do you accept that the ship that is causing so much trouble now came through the portal, and that Mia and I took a shuttle from it down to the surface?”
They both nod again.
I turn my attention to Abrantes. “And, Captain, you found the two of us beside that shuttle, which was clearly not just another downed satellite, along with two others, correct?”
“Yes,” he says, gaze flicking warily toward his two superiors. “Your accomplices on the ground, to help you perpetrate the hoax.”
Mia snorts. “You were there within minutes of us hitting the ground. How could they possibly have joined us? You’d have found some trace of their approach, a car or bikes nearby.”
Director De Luca’s reply is smooth. “You are correct, Miss Radcliffe. It is far more likely that they came with you from Gaia. That they were scavengers.”
Mia turns to Mink. “Look,” she pleads. “Just take a look at them. You hired everyone on the surface of Gaia, right? As part of tricking Jules into helping you? You’ll know they’re not scavengers.”
Mink’s reply is an age in coming. “Show them to me,” she says eventually.
My heart’s beginning to beat harder, relief threatening to tumble loose and flow through me, however much I try to suppress it. Fool me once, I think furiously. But I can’t help it. Mink might have used us unforgivably, but I certainly don’t doubt her competence. She knows who she put on that planet.
More important, she knows who she didn’t put on that planet.
With an irritated twitch of his mouth, the Director walks over to a blank pad fastened to the wall beside the door. His thumbprint brings it to life, and he taps in a couple of commands. The wall to our right lights up—it’s a screen—and it’s running a live feed of our detention cell.
Dex and Atlanta are still in much the same positions as we left them. He has his head bowed, and she’s murmuring something in his ear. There’s no audio on this feed, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a microphone somewhere in the cell, picking up everything we’ve been saying.
Mink studies them for a full minute, until Atlanta turns her head again, giving the camera—or one of them, for I’m realizing now there must be many—a front-on view of her face. Mink is still staring at the screen when she speaks. “I didn’t hire them.”
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��No,” I say. “You didn’t. Because they’re Undying.”
Mink’s sharp eyes flick back toward me. “The only people aboard that ship when it traveled to Earth were you and Amelia Radcliffe—I know that for a fact. We had agents in every part of the ship right up until its launch.”
“That’s because there are portals on board the ship—it’s a Trojan Horse. Dex and Atlanta—those two—they came through with hundreds of others after the ship went through the portal to orbit Earth.”
Mink’s eyes stay on me, and though there’s no flash of horror or understanding to tell me she believes me, she’s not denying it either. I can almost see her thinking, in an eerie echo of the way I can sometimes see Mia thinking—both their minds work at light speed, calculating every angle of a situation.
“They certainly weren’t on Gaia,” Mink says finally, her tone even. “Perhaps Abrantes was mistaken, and there was more time between the craft’s landing and when his men arrived.”
Captain Abrantes starts to bristle, his eyebrows drawing in and face tightening, but before he can protest aloud, De Luca kills the feed. “Or,” he says smoothly, turning to Mink, “you didn’t have as tight a control over transport to and from Gaia as we were led to believe.”
Mink’s gaze is subzero. “I did.”
He lifts his hands as if to indicate his helplessness. “The evidence says otherwise.”
“Look,” I try. “I am begging you to at least consider this. The people in that cell are part of the first wave of an invasion. They are Undying. The ship above us is full of them. We have to ready ourselves.”
Abrantes, spine still stiff with indignation, leans forward. “The Undying have been extinct for centuries. Millennia. How do you explain away the gap of time between the construction of the Gaian temples and this so-called invasion? Do you really think a civilization with that kind of technology would wait fifty thousand years for humans to rise to dominance on this planet before invading?”
I open my mouth, but I’ve got no ready reply to that one. For all that we spent a week aboard that ship, eavesdropping on the Undying soldiers, Mia and I have no answers. If anything, all that we saw and heard only raised more questions.
My eyes skitter sideways, seeking Mia’s, but she’s not looking at me. She’s watching Mink, her face still and set—stubborn, like that look she gets when she’s preparing to fight me on something. Except that she’s quiet now, not fighting at all. And that’s enough to kick my dread up into high gear.
Finally De Luca steps forward. “It’s a clever story,” he says in that calm, cool voice like stainless steel. “But until the International Alliance has allocated the ship’s resources among the world’s nations, and overseen the process, we can’t risk dissension from anyone high profile enough to cause further agitation.”
“High profile?” I echo stupidly.
“You are the son of the world’s leading expert on the Undying,” De Luca replies, raising one eyebrow.
“And why listen to Jules, any more than they listened to his father?” Mia speaks, but her voice is soft. Furious—but resigned.
“It will be better all round if you stay here,” De Luca says smoothly.
“For how long?” I ask, my heart sinking.
“Until the situation is resolved,” he says simply.
“You can’t hold us indefinitely,” I protest. “We have rights.”
Abrantes shakes his head. “In the currently escalated security situation, we can.”
“But that kind of arrangement is for times of war,” I protest. I read up on this stuff after my father was arrested and confined at IA Headquarters in Prague.
De Luca’s smooth expression is all faux regret. “And we are rapidly approaching just such a situation,” he says. “The IA is the only thing standing between that ship in orbit and all-out war between the countries who want it. And we can use whatever means necessary to ensure your cooperation.” His eyes flick over toward Mia, who stiffens, eyes burning with fury.
“Leave my sister out of this,” she snarls. “She’s just a kid.”
Mink has been watching this in silence, and her gaze lingers on Mia for a moment longer before she finally speaks again, her tone sharp. “I don’t recognize those teenagers in the cell. And I am completely confident I controlled the flow of traffic to and from Gaia.”
De Luca shoots her a Really, still this? look. “Operative, if you were able to smuggle your crews—including Mr. Addison and Miss Radcliffe here—to Gaia under the noses of the IA crews manning the scientific vessels, then who is to say someone else could not have done the same to you?”
She shakes her head. “We need to take this to Prague.” For once, Mink’s voice carries with it some heat—she does not like De Luca.
And De Luca’s expression as he looks back at her is just as unfriendly. “So Dr. Addison can find a way to twist it to suit his version of the truth?” He waves a hand in a regretful, mock-helpless gesture. “I wish I could assist.”
Mink fixes him with a stare that’s all cold fury. I’ve seen this woman shoot someone between the eyes and then calmly go about her day. If she was looking at me like that, I’d be running. “I can petition to have all the prisoners released into my custody and bring them to Prague myself. You don’t have the authority to prevent me.”
“Petition whomever you like,” says De Luca mildly. “And when the decision comes back in two months, feel free to come and collect them yourself.”
Two months? The words land like a physical blow, leaving me winded and groping for support. We can’t be stuck here for two months—whatever the Undying are planning, it’ll surely be too late to stop them. We’ll be watching an alien takeover of our planet from the inside of a jail cell.
Just like my dad.
As if he senses my thoughts—or the mounting tension between the head of security and the covert operative—Abrantes calls for a pair of guards with the press of a button on his earpiece, then addresses us. “Mr. Addison, Miss Radcliffe, the guards will escort you back to your quarters now.”
I start to rise from my chair, but Mia leaps from hers and strides across to Mink, getting up in her face. “Mink, you know what’s happening. You have to do something!”
In the most intimate gesture I’ve ever seen from her, Mink rests both her hands on Mia’s shoulders, gazing down at her. “You’re not helping your cause, kid,” she says quietly.
And Mia, uncharacteristically, falls completely silent. For once, I want her impulsive outrage, I want her headlong rush to act and speak without weighing the possible outcomes. I want her to be Mia. But she just stands there, wide-eyed and blinking at Mink.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to stop this. A pair of guards enter, preparing to escort Mia and me back to our cells. De Luca just stands there, watching us with that cool stare, utterly unperturbed by anything we’ve said.
This man is going to be single-handedly responsible for the overthrow of humanity.
And there’s nothing we can do to stop him.
AS THE GUARDS WALK US BACK TO OUR CELL, I CAN’T HELP BUT think of the crash course in overwhelming an armed opponent I received from Javier, one of the mercenaries who followed Jules and me through the temple on Gaia. There are only two guards, and they don’t seem half as well-trained as the operatives Mink brought with her to Gaia’s surface. But even if I could wrest the gun away from one of them—and even if I could pull the trigger—the second one could use Jules as a hostage, or even kill him.
And assuming I could get control, we’re still in the middle of a detention facility whose floor plan we don’t know, full of IA operatives and staff, with countless locked doors between us and freedom. Not to mention, killing someone here would make us fugitives and criminals forever, even if I had the stomach for it.
Mink’s gaze, intense as it met mine, has left me shaken—and burning with curiosity, because there’s a slim outline of pressure in the front pocket of my jacket. She slipped something to
me, while she had me by the shoulders. But I can’t risk a look until the guards are gone.
The cell door whooshes closed behind us and the guards retreat without another word. The seething frustration and fury in Jules’s expression is slowly giving way to a blank-eyed hopelessness, and he barely glances at Atlanta and Dex, who are almost exactly where they were when we were escorted out.
“If I could just get to a phone,” Jules mutters, shoving his hands deep into his pockets, defeat in every line of his body. “Or get the SIM card for my watch back. I could call Neal, see if he could get word to my dad, tell him what we know. Tell him that I’m okay.” His lips twist. “For a given value of okay. It’s been so long, I know what he must be thinking.”
“And I could call Evie. Tell her to get out of town, hide somewhere until this is over.” I cast a long look at our cellmates, using it as cover to glance at the camera in the corner. Once I’m sure I’ve got its position memorized, I sigh and say in a clear voice, “There’s nothing for it but to wait. Come here—it’ll be okay.”
The look Jules flashes me would be funny, under other circumstances. I can almost read his thoughts: Me, suggesting we wait and see how it plays out, is about as likely as us sprouting wings and flying out of this joint. He actually looks a little wary as he redirects his pacing strides to bring him to me.
I turn, making sure my back is to the camera, and pull Jules into a loose embrace. Between our bodies, I slide a hand up to retrieve the rectangular object Mink slipped into my pocket. I drop my forehead like I’m leaning it against Jules’s shoulder, and inspect the bit of plastic.
My breath catches. It’s a keycard.
Jules, hearing my intake of breath, starts to draw back. I tighten the arm still wrapped around him, and he freezes, glancing down at the card in my hands. It’s the same type of card the guards have been using to pass through the doors as they escort us around the base. Jules’s eyes widen as he looks back up at me. Swiftly, I slip the card back into my pocket and let him go.